"I think we have a good chance because we're a young football team," Ditka said yesterday afternoon of his Chicago Bears, who soundly trounced New England 46-10 last Jan. 26 in Super Bowl XX. "Being young, we're hungry and don't take many things for granted.

"The fun we had last year, I don't know that it came so much from winning as from playing. We let them be themselves, gave them some leeway in areas maybe some other coaches wouldn't have, and we got good results. It paid dividends for us."

The best. The Bears, riding the perfect balance of offense and defense, won 15 of 16 regular-season games and swept through the playoffs by shutting out the New York Giants and Los Angeles Rams before routing the Patriots.

Has the realization of that achievement 3 1/2 months ago sunk in? "I don't think it ever sinks in," he said while puffing on the ever-present cigar and relaxing in the Sheraton Jetport. "It's something you work hard to achieve and, once you achieve it, it just whets your appetite for more.

"You start worrying about how you can get back, how you can play up to the same caliber of football you played the year before, what you can do to improve. What were your weaknesses and what are other teams going to do to exploit them?

"It puts your mind into a continual working process of how to improve yourself, how to eliminate the things you did wrong last year."

Coming off a Super Bowl season, Ditka said his most important job as a head coach is keeping the team's enthusiasm up. "What must you do to keep the attitude from slipping, to keep morale up, to keep complacency from setting in?" he asked. "You can't relax.

"See what happened to the 49ers. They're an excellent team, but complacency set in. They thought they could just roll their helmets out there and win, but it's not like that. Once you're at the top everybody wants a piece of you. It'sa feather in your hat to say you beat the team that won it all. That's a big incentive."

The kind of incentive Cleveland, the Eagles and Green Bay will have in the first three games next season. "We're going to run up against teams like that until we establish ourselves as a good team," he said. "Look at Minnesota beating San Francisco in the first game last year. That got them off to a great start, gave them a lot of self confidence."

Chicago will entertain the Eagles in the second game of the year in Soldier Field, a matchup that will pit Ditka against Buddy Ryan, his former defensive coordinator. Is there really bad blood between them?

"You win because you get good people," he said. "If some people want to say we won because of defense, that's up to them, but we had good people and good coaching.

"I get along with everybody, have no problem with Buddy. He's a good coach and if his defense can be implemented as fast with the Eagles and he has the personnel that can play it well, they'll have a lot of success a team normally wouldn't have under a new coach. That will be a big feather in their cap.

"It's a great defense, but whether you can implement it in one year I don't know. I do know that the offense has to be able to control the football, take the pressure off the defense so it's not always on the field."

Although Ditka doesn't put much stock in drafts "until you line up and play," he thinks the Eagles did well.

"It depends a lot on the health of (Keith) Byars," he said. "He's an excellent player, a blue chip player for years. We couldn't pass him up if he'd been there.

"(Alonzo) Johnson . . . it's up to him. If he wants to straighten out his life and play football, he can be very, very good like Wilber Marshall. But that's up to him. He's got to do what's right."

Johnson, a linebacker who was taken in the second round, reportedly tested positive to cocaine use last January. Marshall overcame a similar problem and now is one of the best linebackers in the league.

Ditka called Bethlehem's Mike Hartenstine "for his age, probably the best conditioned athlete in the league. He works hard and still plays well and practices well.

"He's been outstanding for us, probably has been our steadiest player. He's been an unheralded hero for years, but never got the publicity or acclaim he deserved. He doesn't make mistakes, and that's what you look for. He'll contribute again next year."

Last night Ditka gave a motivational talk at a national sales convention of Genesco-Grief in the Sheraton.

"I talk to a lot of groups like this, tell them what I think it takes to get a job done," he said. "I meet a lot of nice people and get more out of these meetings than I put in. It's been fun."

Winning a Super Bowl was fun, too, but it only served to whet Mike Ditka's appetite. He wants more.